May 1995, the first E3 in Los Angeles. Sega has just announced its new console at $399 when a Sony executive walks to the podium, says $299, and walks off. This episode explains how Sega handed Sony that sledgehammer, and treats the Sega Saturn as a master class in organizational failure: an internal civil war, panicked engineering, alienated retailers, and a mascot that never showed up.

We look at a 2D machine hastily rebuilt to chase the PlayStation, ending up with eight processors, two Hitachi SH-2 CPUs sharing one bus, and quadrilaterals instead of triangles that forced developers into custom assembly code. Then the boardroom: Sega of Japan vetoing Tom Kalinske's proposed partnerships with Sony and Silicon Graphics, the 32X stopgap released months before the Saturn, the surprise launch that shipped units to only four retailers and promp ...